A series of screenings of the controversial Kony 2012 video have been canceled in Uganda after angry viewers in the northern city of Lira threw rocks and refused to keep watching on Tuesday evening.

Jason Russell’s 30-minute video, now viewed 79 million times on YouTube, highlights the atrocities perpetrated by Mr. Kony, head of the Lord Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group that once terrorized northern Uganda.

“It was very traumatizing for some people,” Victor Ochen, director of the African Youth Initiative Network, told the National Post. “(They) felt the movie did not respect the feelings of the victims.”

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The LRA is notorious for violence including hacking body parts off victims and abducting young boys to fight and young girls to be used as sex slaves.

Mr. Kony and his fighters were driven out of northern Uganda, where they forced, in 2005 after targeting communities for nearly two decades. They moved into the neighbouring countries of Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Funded by the San Diego-based charity Invisible Children, the film tells the story of a former child soldier named Jacob and then issues a call to action to viewers to help “make Joseph Kony famous.”

Although the film has raised more than $5-million and won the backing of millions of people, including celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Rihanna, the charity behind the project has faced criticism over their message, methods and financial transparency.

Thousands of people walked for hours to get to Lira, to see the film projected on a white sheet, while others listened to the audio of the video broadcast on local radio, Mr. Ochen said.

Mr. Ochen’s NGO is not affiliated with Invisible Children but decided to screen the film because many citizens in northern Uganda have little or no access to electricity or the Internet.

But the crowd in Lira quickly started disputing some of the points made in the story, including the claim that the world didn’t know about the LRA.

“That is a lie,” Mr. Ochen said. “The world knew about the LRA. That’s why international communities were making contributions … and the (United Nations) was giving support because they knew about the LRA.”

The story told in the film better represented a Uganda from 2002 or 2003, Mr. Ochen said.

A push for U.S. military intervention to capture Mr. Kony is terrifying for families whose children are still missing and could be killed in a bombing aimed at the war criminal, said Mr. Ochen, whose own brother and cousin were captured and have not been released.

Other viewers were confused by the heavy presence of the filmmaker and his son in the video, and began to question who the film was meant to be targeting.

The crowds’ frustration peaked when the film urged viewers to “make Kony famous,” said Mr. Ochen.

“People said what? You’re saying we should make him famous?” he said. “The guy who killed us? The guy who took our children? This is an insult we cannot accept this, they said.”

The crowd was so angry they said anyone wearing a Kony 2012 t-shirt should be banned from crossing the White Nile river into northern Uganda, Mr. Ochen said.